The world is filled with the stories of shared experiences, but we all bring our own backstories that change our perceptions and what we get out of them. Here are my sides of the stories.

Author: Marc Z Tambor

There is no way Disney, in all their infinity and beyond wisdom, could have known the world they’d be releasing the live-action Beauty And The Beast into. The director of the film says he was approached about it as long as five years ago. Well before T.P.E. (Trump Presidency Era). But it is remarkable how much this story fits into the post T.P.E. times.

Beauty And The Beast is a story about not judging a book by its cover. It even uses a girl who loves to read books. So clever. But it’s really a little more than that. Because the Beast isn’t just a great book inside of a monstrous cover. He’s also a little monstrous inside. He was cursed to make his outsides match the insides. So Belle doesn’t just decide to look past the cover and see what his story is. She actively goes looking for and pulls out the good. And right now, we are living in a world where we pretty much decide who has good in them and who doesn’t without really trying to get the whole story.

Who we are in the story of Beauty And The Beast, and in the world it’s being told in. In the classic Which Character Are You fashion that I have actually only done once so I’m probably not doing it right (I am a Targaryen, but like a Daenerys Targaryen, not a Mad King), let’s find out:

Are you the BEAST? Do you act like a monster, but have some goodness in you. Somewhere deep down. So deep down, the world can’t see it, and you probably forgot about it yourself? Maybe you think the world made you the monster you are? Maybe you think the world deserves a monster?

Are you GASTON? Are you so arrogant that you think everything you do is right? Do you get mobs riled up after someone you consider to be a monster? After someone you see as a threat to you and your beliefs that you think are best and right?

Are you LeFOU? Do you idolize someone so much, you’ll let them rile you up into anything without getting the full story?

Are you an ENCHANTED OBJECT? Do you make excuses for your Beast, even when he’s being a monster, just because you think there’s something good there? In other words, are you an enabler and letting the Beast continue to be a Beast by not holding him accountable for being a monster?

Are you BELLE? Do you seek out knowledge? Do you believe there’s more to learn and are willing to look deeper? Does your open mind and open heart invite and bring out the best in everyone?

Statistically* there is a much greater likelihood that you are a LeFou or Enchanted Object. There are far too many LeFous and Enchanted Objects. Also a bunch of Beasts and Gastons. And not nearly enough Belles.

And I get it. It’s easy to be those first four. The Beast was cursed for not being nice as a pre-teen orphan. He’s angry at the world for being unfair. Sometimes it is. Sometimes you just want to take things you want when things aren’t right. And Gaston really believes he’s right, so why shouldn’t he push the issue? And it’s easy to be against a Beast and a boor. And it’s even easier to be the follower of someone so confident, or the object with affection. Being Belle is tough. It takes the most work. It requires thinking about… at least two things at once. That what you believe to be true is true, and what someone else believes to be true can also be true.

But what Beauty And The Beast tells us is this:

Stop being a beast. You get from the world what you put into it. If you want to block out all light, you will live in the dark. If you want light, let it in.

And don’t be such a boor. It almost impossible to be 100% right about anything (and I say “almost” because I’m not a boor). You want to believe in yourself, great. But before you tar up the torches, consider the other side may actually have some merit, and maybe you won’t get people needlessly crushed by an armoire.

Be more than a follower. The follower gets used and forgotten. The follower gets buried in snow to wait for developments because the follower doesn’t matter, not even to the Gastons they’re following. They’re a means to an end. Don’t follow. You’re only going to walk into something you have no control of and get yourself and everyone around you hurt.

As for the Enchanted Objects, there’s a lot wrong there. They not only enable the Beast, but they pretty much make sure Belle falls in love with him to save themselves. It’s the Beast who lets her go after she brings out his good. The enchanted objects actually give him some crap for that. Who knows how many more women’s bodies are still in that castle? Not to mention the existential issues they bring up. Was Chip born with a little piece missing? If it happened as the cup, does he return to human form missing a piece? Were Lumiere’s candles his fingers? Were they shorter when he returned to human form? When the Wardrobe came back to human form, were the clothes still inside her?

I think I lost the thread of this thing there. Look, just don’t be any of those guys. Left to themselves, they’d all be dead or permanently cursed. Do the work. Look for the good as much as you can. Especially where you think there is none. Make the world a better place. Be the Belle.

* Based on zero amount of math. More on just a basic empirical observation of the world. Particularly social media… but I stand by my findings.

The Little Mermaid, for me and probably millions and millions of people across the world, was a defining movie. It might even be the first movie I remember seeing in theaters as a child almost 30 years ago. I, a young boy, was completely into this story of a young teenage girl. In a way, it may have been the start of the women’s equality movement pushed by millennials now.

Okay, that may have gone too far, but there could be something there. Disney did something remarkable with this young heroine, Ariel. They made a coming-of-age story about a young girl finding true love one that boys who were only into Superman and Ghostbusters and sports get completely invested in.

So it’s been somewhat surprising and upsetting to see Ariel be criticized for being a weak girl and a terrible example because she had to be saved by her boyfriend. So I’m going to mansplain- kidding. Kidding… I’m going to defend this bright, young woman, not as a male, but as a writer because I think the people at Disney created a great character and one of our strongest heroines.

The movie starts off telling us Ariel is not only the best of the mermaids with the most beautiful voice, but she’s also very much her own person. When the other mermaids are all at the performance, she’s off doing her own thing. And what is she doing? She’s exploring a human wreck. She’s fascinated by everything human, despite the mermaids accepted belief that humans are barbarians who would eat anything they catch in the ocean. But Ariel believes two things: humans are not bad, and she’s old enough to explore their world that she’s curious about. She has her own opinions that no one else in the mermaid kingdom believes. In other words, she has her own voice. A voice her father won’t listen to. “Not another word,” he says as she tries to explain herself, and only pushes her away.

In this regard, The Little Mermaid is very much a coming of age story. Ariel is a 16-year old girl who’s growing up and developing her own beliefs and just wants to go out into the world with them. She’s a bright young woman, sick of swimming in her daddy’s ocean, ready to stand on her own, and she wants to go somewhere where she believes she’ll be listened to and respected. And she’s drawn to this surface world she doesn’t know, because the one she does know doesn’t approve of her beliefs, so maybe this other world will.

So she swims to the surface and gets up closer to humans than she ever has before, and she’s instantly drawn to one human: Eric. Why? Is he handsome? She sure thinks so, but it helps that the first time Ariel sets eyes on him, he’s playing lovingly with Max. His dog- in other words- not a human. In fact, Eric jumps back into an exploding ship to save Max. Again, a dog. Again, not a human. Eric, this human is risking his life to save a non-human. And this is the man Ariel falls in love with.

Sebastian goes on to sing about how fish are only food on land, but Ariel saw Eric care for a non-human. She believes differently, and she doesn’t even listen to this anti-human diatribe anymore. She’s off to follow what she believes in.

After King Triton tries to silence her again and completely pushes her away, she turns to someone who offers to give her what she wants- Ursula. Ursula sings about the poor, unfortunate souls she’s helped, and this song is a seduction. It’s terribly vampy, and always creeped me out. With her song, Ursula offers Ariel a deal that will give her the ability to go where she wants, and all she has to give up is her voice, and possibly her soul if she can’t win over Eric’s heart. But what will Ariel do to woo Eric without her voice (and if you were paying attention, her voice is her beliefs, who she is, what makes her her)? By using her body language, of course. Because a body used right is what men care about. And the innocent, naive Ariel who doesn’t know men, falls for it.

Then, when she gets to the land and meets Eric without her voice, she’s just an empty girl. A beautiful girl, but vapid and clumsy and completely in need of a rescue, and Eric helps her because he’s a good guy, but he doesn’t fall in love with her. He’s already in love with a girl that looks like Ariel, but that girl has a strong voice and she risked her life to save him. This mute girl may look like her, but there’s more to a girl than her looks. Eric doesn’t fall in love with Ariel until she gets her voice back, until he sees who she is and what she believes in. Until he sees she’s a girl with a heart, a mind and spirit.

And then it all goes to hell. Ariel turns back into a mermaid. Ursula takes her down to her lair, and then she gets Triton’s powers and wreaks havoc. And here is where everyone loses respect for Ariel and this story: Eric comes to the rescue and kills Ursula, saving everyone. Little Ariel isn’t a strong woman because she needed to be saved by a man, right? Wrong.

It HAD to be Eric that saved her. Ariel’s entire person, her voice, is based on the belief- the belief that her father and everyone else tried to break- that people, and specifically Eric, could care about non-humans, fish, mermaids, whatever. Eric had to come back and risk his life to save a mermaid to prove her right. Eric saving Ariel vindicates her, it gives her a leg to stand on, and makes her father realize Ariel is ready to go off and stand on her own two feet.

So, you see? Ariel isn’t a pathetic damsel in need of saving. She’s adventurous. She’s bright, and she’s willing to risk everything for what she believes in. That’s who she is, and who she is earns the love of a person willing to risk everything to save her and the respect of her father. And it also she changes the entire belief system of her species, and perhaps every fish and mammal in the ocean. But no big deal. Not to Ariel. Not that bright, young woman.

If you’ve been following along for the 26 days of story ideas, you probably know I try to tell stories that mean something. And as often as I can, I try to tell stories that mean something about people coming together for something good.

Well, today’s story idea will be one of those ideas because today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day we reflect on what hate and evil can do when left unchecked and the importance of being good to each other, especially those being persecuted.

The Holocaust and World War II in general was one of the most defining moments of all time. The UN was born out of it. America’s role as a world leader was established. And many countries used it as an impetus to commit itself to fight hate. Unfortunately, the defining moment is passing as more and more people are forgetting or purposefully erasing the memory of the Holocaust, or trying to warp the lessons of it. So I believe it’s important to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, and writing a children’s book that plants the seed of being united against hate and evil in the fertile mind of the young is a great avenue to do that.

This will be hard for me, though, because I don’t like to destroy the innocence of children, so while I think it’s important to tell a true story, because it’s so hard to believe, these stories need to be told, I don’t think I could do it.

The story I could tell would be a metaphor of the Martin Niemoller poem:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Though, I would like to add to the idea, because it’s not enough, in my mind, to help Others because they can one day help you. It’s important to help Others because it’s right. That’s the story I want to tell. In fact now that I’ve typed all this out, I think I have a title: The Others, and possibly a completely different direction for the story…

Today’s idea came from a conversation about writing technique. Another writer was telling me about how she doesn’t think too much about her stories before she writes. She has the idea and just starts putting it down and lets the story go where it will. And so she didn’t consider herself a “trained writer.”

Well, I can’t think of a worse thing than a “trained writer.”

That’s not true at all. I can think of so many worse things, including blowing nothings out of proportion.

But I still thought the idea of a trained writer like a trained dog was an interesting idea. And there is this market for meta picture books about picture books, so I thought about a dog writer that is trained to write the most predictable stories. The dog wants to write stories where the main character chases its own tail or jumps on the furniture, but fights the urge to follow its training. But after realizing those stories are the not the stories it was supposed to tell, the dog lets its character chase after that car and go wild.

And yes, I am aware the very image I used for this post should have made me realize that this idea isn’t that completely original, but I’m sticking with it.

It took 25 days, but I have now circled around on ideas. The good news is I have fleshed out an idea from earlier in the month, the bad news is I spent the day thinking I had a new idea when I did not.

So here’s an idea I came up with earlier in the month with another idea and have been keeping in my back pocket.

It’s a bout a kid who wants to wear his/her parents shoes. Of course they don’t fit yet, but the kid wears them anyway and tries to follow in his/her parents’ footsteps.

As s/he grows older, the shoes fit somewhat better as they are better able to follow what their parents do, until the kid actually catches up to the parents and can fit them perfectly.

And at that point, the parents give the kid his/her own pair of shoes to blaze their own path.

So apparently January 24th is National Compliment Day. And it couldn’t come soon enough. We could use a day that forces us to look for something good in everyone else. Especially people we’re in opposition to.

So what if someone who is picked on- or maybe they’re the antagonist, and is cursed to live the line, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

If the kid wants to communicate anything, s/he has to say nice, even about people s/he does not like at all. And when forced to look for the good in someone, the child learns there is good in everyone. And that’s a good place to start in coming to understand the people s/he thinks are just the worst.

With all the “fake news” going around and this phenomena of half the world believing something so strongly and the other half believing something else, I wanted to write something about belief.

Some of the best things in the world, like Santa Claus, and some of the worst things, like the Boogeyman, are things no one can prove and that helps keep the belief alive. Because even as an adult, you kind of want to believe Santa Claus is real, so you keep a small place alive deep inside you, amidst the part of you that says, “Of course, Santa’s not real.” that says, “But maybe…”

And I want to tell a story about that power of belief, and the power of it. Or a story about that little place we keep inside us. Maybe it’s lost and we want it back…

I admit I’ve really been limping to the finish line, here. I’ve almost completely forgot to do this for the past couple of days.

I spent the day with a lot of kids of different ages, and I noticed how older kids act like they’re so much more mature than little kids. And by the way, by older I mean like 6 years old and by younger I mean 4 years old. And I had an idea for a story about a kid being bothered incessantly by this little pest. This thing won’t leave the child alone and the child finally just gives in. It gives the pest what it wants and acts so superior… and then the child goes to his parents and pesters his/her parents for something.